1. ECOCENTRIC OUTDOOR EDUCATION: EXPANDING CURRICULA THROUGH
THE LANGUAGE OF ECOPSYCHOLOGY
By John D. Lynch
A Thesis
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
in the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
in Sustainable Communities
Northern Arizona University
December 2011
Approved:
Janine Schipper, Ph.D., Chair
Stanley Clark, Ph.D.
Pam Foti, Ph.D.

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ABSTRACT
ECOCENTRIC OUTDOOR EDUCATION: EXPANDING CURRICULA THROUGH
THE LANGUAGE OF ECOPSYCHOLOGY
John D. Lynch
The following work explores a more holistic and complete model of outdoor
education. It uses the language of ecopsychology to broaden the boundaries of
understanding currently scene in traditional outdoor education and explores marginalized
aspects of personal growth in outdoor education participants.
This thesis begins with a personal narrative that chronicles my own personal
development and growth in nature throughout my life. The first chapter is meant to
function in two ways: 1) It details how my own experiences have contributed greatly
towards the origin of this thesis; 2) It creates an experiential component that supports the
content found in the following chapters.
Chapter two is a literary review that details three important components of this
thesis: 1) Evidence for ecospiritual benefits in outdoor education (see p. 56), 2)
Traditional Outdoor Education, and 3) Ecopsychology.
Chapter three works to explore the term ecospirituality with the supporting
language and theories found in ecopsychology. Logical explanations that increase
understanding of nonwestern benefits are detailed to create support for ecospirituality as a
valid consideration for outdoor education.

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Chapter Four asks what place ecospirituality has in contemporary outdoor
education. It also envisions a new model of outdoor education by detailing what
ecocentric additions could be implemented into the curricula.
Chapter Five concludes the thesis by suggesting that the lack of understanding in
outdoor education, surrounding human development in nature, is an extension of
inadequate understanding within the greater western culture. Moreover, it points out that
ecocentric processes in outdoor education can be extended towards the greater culture as
model for transforming collective minds towards a more mature social system.

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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: JOURNEY TOWARDS THE CHRYSALIS………………………….6
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………….……………..50
CHAPTER THREE: ECOSPIRITUALITY IN OUTDOOR EDUCATION ………….83
CHAPTER FOUR: CONSIDERING ECOSPIRITUALITY IN OUTDOOR
EDUCATION CURRICULA…………………………………………………………..106
CHAPTER FIVE: OUTDOOR EDUCATION AND WESTERN
CONSCIOUSNESS……………………………………………………………..…...…127
APPENDIX A…………………………………………………………………………..143
WORKS CITED:…………………………….…………………………………………149
NOTES………………………………………………………………………...………..159

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Figures:
Figure 1.1 - Definitions of Outdoor Education
Figure 1.2 – Wheel of Life: Plotkin
Figure 1.3 – Wheel of Life Focus Area: Plotkin
Figure 1.4 - Consciousness Influence Diagram: Gregory
Figure 1.5 - Ecocentric Consciousness Influence Diagram

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Chapter 1
Journey towards the Chrysalis
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you. ~Rainer Maria Rilke
(American Public Media 2011)

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The following piece is meant to be an ethno autobiography/personal narrative
recounting my evolving relationship in Naturei
. The intention is that my story will help to
illuminate my foundations for this thesis. Jürgen W. Kremer (2003) helps us define ethno
autobiography by saying:
I define ethno autobiography as creative self-exploratory writing (or oral
presentation) that grounds itself in the ethnic, cultural, historical, ecological, and
gender background of the author. Part of such writing is the investigation of
hybridity, categorical borderlands and transgressions, and the multiplicity of
(hi)stories carried outside and inside the definitions and discourses of the dominant
society of a particular place and time. As creative and evocative writing and
storytelling, ethno autobiography explores consciousness as the network of
representations held by individuals from a subjective perspective, and brings them
into inquiring conversation with objective factors related to identity construction (9).
Another aim of this chapter is to help the reader better digest the contents of this
thesis through retrospective story. I hope that the reader will reflect upon his/her own
lives while reading the circumstances found in my own. With my fingers crossed, the
reader will be able to relate to my experiences or at least question their traditional
western relationship with the more-than-human worldii
. In this way, I hope the reader’s
own personal story, recounting his/her relationship with wild places, will be present when
introducing the concepts of this paper, thereby making it more experiential.
Introduction
In my early thirties, I am finding myself to be different than how I was educated
to become. The rhythm to which I now dance my way through life—instead of marching
as I had been taught—has shifted towards a more ancient tune, a source of being that I

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had been carefully conditioned to ignore. A new way of knowing both my self and the
world has emerged within me from my experiences in, what David Abrams describes as,
the more-than-human world. I feel as if my indigenous mind is slowly awakening, the
part of my being that is aware of its “holonic”iii
position in the more-than-human world.
The identity trailing behind my evolving approach to this world is maturation. Such a
transformation has forced me to ask fundamental questions of myself regarding my
relationship with the more-than-human world: Who am I, and how did I get here?
Lessons from Neshaminy
The majority of my childhood experience took place in the suburbs of northeast
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. My house was nestled in the
back of a housing development highlighted by white middle class families and finely
groomed lawns. Herds of children ran freely around the neighborhood as a testament to
the many young families eager to begin their domestic lives. As a child, I could follow a
line of box elder trees leading from my back yard towards an open field; behind the field
was a patch of woods. It rested between multiple housing developments and was roughly
ten to fifteen acres. However, to the youngster of me, it was vast.
In the woods near my house a creek lazily wound its way through thick stands of
deciduous trees. I remember seeing the creek as a boundary. Going beyond the creek
meant leaving my childhood domain. This watery demarcation acted as a gateway to
more than a few childhood adventures. It was the heart of the forest and its name was
derived from the original people who once lived there a long time ago. They were called
the Neshaminy.

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Summer in the Neshaminy woods was warm, humid, and rich with life. Carpets of
green made their home on all sorts of surfaces while deep layers of fallen leaves
blanketed the forest floor. Metallic clicking of insects along with bouquets of earthy
aroma filled the air. White noise from rustling leaves rose and fell with the breath of the
wind. My childhood familiarity with this place was my first in the more-than-human
world.
Although the name Neshaminy was an intimate aspect of the woods near my
house, its meaning and value beyond its use as a local name was rarely evident. Yet, I
occasionally remember having instances of romantic thoughts of the Neshaminy people
while strolling through the kid-created trails and paths woven into thick stands of
deciduous trees. I imagined the kind of life they had, and how different it must have been
compared to my own. I knew little else about these people; it was not taught in school.
All I knew was people had lived in these forests for a long time before the arrival of
colonials, and their name only now endures in local labels and high school mascots.
That is as deep as my knowledge goes regarding the native people who once lived
in the woods behind my house. As much as I would like to think I understood them
during my time in the Neshaminy woods, I did not. The perfume of those people hung
faintly in the air for me then, or perhaps my senses were too dull to catch their scent.
Either way, I was never exposed to that integral aspect of the land where I explored as
child. Yet, the forest offered small reminders from time to time.
One summer I found an Indian peace medal buried in the soil of the forest floor.
Medals like this were given to tribes by the government to signify good relations—most

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likely a euphemism for compliance under colonial norms. On one side of the medal was
an overlaid image of two hands shaking; behind them, a tomahawk and peace pipe
crossed one another. In the bronze space between it read, “Peace and Friendship.” On the
other side was a picture of John Adams, dated 1797.
The exchange of gifts is an age-old human tradition, and the peace medal I found
in the soil is a symbol of that. However, looking back, the peace medal has deeper
lessons to offer. It is also a symbol of Eurocentric values standing in stark contrast to
traditional pan-indigenous value systems.
Historically, Indigenous people did not generally give arbitrary gifts; most often
than not, they were useful. Their benefits crossed into both the metaphysical and tangible
worlds and were often associated with ceremony, good spirits and beauty if not used for
survival purposes alone. Even the well-known currency of wampum originally began as
decorative beaded necklaces and sashes whose color dictated spiritual and ceremonial
power. Each piece showcased intricate craftsmanship and beauty. It was only after
European contact that wampum was massed produced by whites and used as an abstract
form of value currency (Prindle 1994). Naturally, indigenous people probably saw the
governmental peace medals in a similar light.
It is easy to imagine that, to the Indian, a peace medal was deeply meaningful.
Perhaps it represented a pact of cooperation, or an implied security of their way of life. If
seen similarly to original wampum, the peace medal could have even been assumed to be
useful in ceremony towards the conjuring of good energy. If this were the case, they
would have had no reason to assume the peace medal gift would be given under any other

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circumstances other than good faith and healthy relations. Yet, as history has revealed,
the indigenous way of establishing value differed from colonial Europeans.
To this day, when I hold the peace medal in my hand, I imagine it symbolizes the
meeting of two different ways of knowing value. To colonials, the medal was a symbol of
further hierarchical values such as land ownership, compliance within the doctrine of
manifest destiny, and a devout faith in tangible reality—or the worth found only in the
substance of a thing. Little effort went into the production of the medals and they had
virtually no monetary value within the colonial economic system. I wonder if colonials
were exploiting the way in which natives approached the art of gift giving. Perhaps the
peace medal I found was an illusory form of value, a red herring of a gift, whereby its
value to the Neshaminy failed to match that of the colonials who made it. Either way, I
imagine colonial value terms did not register within native value systems and vice versa.
Those who distributed peace medals to the Neshaminy tribe are my colonial
ancestors; it is their way of interpreting value that has had the greatest pervasion of my
own. I did not know it then, but the value of that medal is confusing to me now. I am
saddened at the unavoidable miscommunication within myself that it now represents for
me. I am grief stricken that the environment from which my value conditioning was
forged is so one sided. As a result, my recovery from the collective western pathos and
my journey towards maturation has been long and over due. Considering this, my time in
the more-than-human world sheds insight into the conditions behind my eco-based way
of knowing.

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My childhood intentions in the Neshaminy woods near my house were simple
enough. My business usually included projects with other boyhood friends; a bike trail
here, a wooden tree house there. Trees were chopped, undergrowth dug up, rocks moved
and adolescent organization established. I can remember a sense of satisfaction after a
completed project. My friends and I would return to spend time in our places of
rudimentary modernization, yet within a season or two; the Neshaminy woods would
quickly, and easily, reclaim the area. Undergrowth would restore itself and scrap lumber
quickly grew moldy in the moist air, softening with rot. Nails and other small scraps of
metal and plastic were all that remained. Although innocent enough, my friends and I
were practicing a deprecating way of knowing and relating to the world around us. The
colonial way of knowing and determining value, as symbolized by my peace medal,
endures. My friends and I were echoing colonial values nearly two hundred years later in
the Neshaminy woods.
The group of boys I spent time with, and undoubtedly many others before me,
approached the Neshaminy woods with a sense of hierarchy. The forest was our place
away from authority; it existed purely to withstand and house our right to do what we
wanted. We were its authority; it was our domain in a time when adults controlled nearly
every other aspect of our lives. We relished it in that way.
Like most adolescence males, I wanted a bb gun for no good reason other than to
win the respect of friends, to be “cool.” The week I got one, my friend and I hurried to
the woods, wasting no time. We shot everything in sight, and surprisingly, most things
went unharmed due to our poor aim. However, I recall a moment when we captured a
frog. To this day I am still ashamed of what we did to it.

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We had spent most of the afternoon shooting trees, rocks and bits of garbage until
we came across a small pond. Afterwards, we scoured the area for something more
worthy of our marksmanship. We shot at fish, turtles and birds, but our aim was off.
Frustrated, we began trying to catch anything that could walk. We began with bugs,
however their seemingly low form of life quickly bored us; we craved bigger game to
prove our worth. At last, I succeeded in catching a frog.
I could feel the frog’s effort to escape as I held it in my hands. Although its skin
was slimy and its legs were strong, it was no match for my adolescent grip. I considered
my self to be a seasoned frog catcher at this point in my life. My hands tightened after a
few attempts to poke its head between my fingers. The frog eventually surrendered and
remained still, perhaps from the encroaching pressure from my hands in all directions. A
grinned crossed my face; it had given up hope for escape. Maybe it had been caught
before; I’m not sure. I placed the frog on the ground, backed away, and my friend took
aim and began to shoot unsuccessfully. The frog remained motionless with eyes fixed; it
made no effort to escape. If it could have felt humiliation, I’m sure it did.
Looking back, I am confused by the frog’s behavior. I am sure the frog could
sense the musty water no more than a foot away from where it sat on the banks of its
home pond. It could have reached the water in one hop—although we were ready for that.
I wonder if the frog could somehow sense the heightened excitement we had worked
ourselves into. Perhaps it knew we would not stop until we killed something. I imagine
the fever pitch of excitement that only a male adolescent with a bb gun can conjure up
could be quite scary for any sensitive creature to endure. And so, it remained motionless,
awaiting its inexorable fait.

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We switched positions, and my aim wasn’t any better. Finally, I walked directly
over the frog out of frustration, took aim, fired, and put a bb into its back. We cheered
with joy and delighted in our success. Next, we spread the injured frog on a rock;
stretching out each limb, we prepared it to be tortured. No words were exchanged
between us; it was as if we already knew what would follow. We took turns shooting the
limbs of the poor frog one by one until they were completely separated from its body.
What remained was a limbless lump of a frog, probably barely alive. When there were no
more limbs to shoot, we finished it off by embedding a few more bb’s into its soft belly
until it took a final breath.
I still remember the look of the frog to this day. Its throat bobbed up and down
through most of the procedure. It had a stoic and expressionless gaze that exuded pure
innocence. The child of me saw it as awesome; perhaps I was doing away with my own
innocence by abusing that of the frog’s. Only now do I realize the ignorance I exuded.
This image still makes my eyes water to this day. Although the memory of the frog’s
torture haunts me, it is the frame of mind out of which my friend and I behaved that is
most disturbing to me now. Who, or what, is to blame?
The sadness I find in this story is real nearly twenty years later. I am saddened
that the human world in which I grew up so easily fostered objectivity towards things so
obviously alive. My experience with the frog that day paints a general picture of how I
approached the natural world as a child. The natural world was a less-than-human world
to me then. It was something that existed on the periphery of my more important human
world, my adolescent social life. My world was somehow outside of, and above, the
more-than-human world. What’s more is that this frame of mind was not mine alone. It

15. 15
was, and still is, the dominant western model of understanding from which I formed my
own way of knowing. This is a system that masks nature injustices as necessary virtues
concomitant with becoming an adult. All I could draw upon, as an impressionable child,
was this way of relating to the world. It was the only perspective offered to me from the
human world that I could choose from. Unfortunately, that choice deprived me of
practicing basic human nature, the ability to feel empathy and compassion for the more-
than-human world.
I am sure the frog way of knowing was very different from my own. I imagine
that it held no grudge upon my friend and me, even during the brutal act of
dismemberment. I imagine it was simply terrified and confused; its forgiveness was never
needed because we were never to blame—individual blame was not part of its knowing.
Much like a newborn human, I imagine the frog struggled to distinguish us from its
surroundings, and therefore, could not isolate blame upon two humans. We were simply a
moving part of the external world surprisingly inflicting torture never before experienced.
The events of that day were simply unfolding without resistance to any expectations, just
as they always do in a day and a life of a frog, or any other creature, free from the pitfalls
of human cunning.
I find beauty in the stoic innocence of that frog. I can’t help but feel a deeper part
of me resonating with my image of it. In some way, the frog exuded and air of purity in
its final moments of death. Perhaps there is a lost frog in me waiting to emerge. If there
is, it is difficult to focus upon. My way of knowing has been carefully conditioned to
ignore such voices.

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Human consciousness is both a blessing and a curse. It has the ability to recognize
patterns and subsequently create predictions of how future events may play out from
previous experiences and circumstances. Human consciousness also has the ability to see
itself separately and invariably forms a reflexive ego early on in childhood development.
Great creativity is a result; however, the degree of health in which that creative energy is
focused is vulnerable.
It is important to recognize that human awareness can be susceptible to unhealthy
creativity whereby illusions of truth and pathology are adopted as normalcy. Unbalanced
values, ontology, and epistemology that marginalize other ways of being and knowing
invariably narrow one’s approach to the world. My childhood in the Neshaminy woods is
a good example.
My childhood creativeness, born out of my human cunning in the Neshaminy
woods, was influenced by radically anthropocentric epistemologies. This led to unethical
and detached interactions with the more-than-human world. That frame of mind endured
as I grew and was perpetuated over and over again in a variety of behaviors throughout
my life. I wonder what it would have been like if my innate human creativity developed
under the guidance of something wiser than my culture, perhaps say, a frog.
I imagine that healthy creativity is a beautiful and life affirming process. It
persuades a wellness-oriented behavior for all that come in contact with it. It is balanced,
unabashed, compassionate, inspiring, expressive, curious, humble, nurturing, patient,
irrational and mysterious. In this creative light I can conceive that in some mysterious
way the frog suffered, what seemed to be willingly, in order to plant a seed in me, a

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lesson that would not come to fruition for nearly twenty years. Maybe the frog was a
teacher and it has taken me twenty years to understand the lesson from that day. Perhaps
that frog influenced my creative development after all.
If it is true that what occurs in the microcosm occurs in the macrocosm, my
childhood is a metaphor, or example of, a greater story. The way I approached the
Neshaminy woods as a child represents the dominant epistemology of the culture in
which I was raised. In hindsight, my time in the Neshaminy woods illuminates not only
my representation of the dominant separation of humans and the more-than-human world,
but it begs certain wonderment around the opposite approach.
What would my life have been like if I was aware of a more healthy way of
relating with the more-than-human world? Perhaps I would still experiment in the woods
as a child and even cause some mischief. However, I imagine if I saw myself nested
within the more-than-human world, or even as the more-than-human world itself, it
would have greatly changed my experiences. Perhaps I would have not killed the frog,
and if I did, maybe the process would have been more humane. Maybe I would have
honored the frog’s life after killing it by acknowledging its life in some ritual fashion,
eating it, or simply saying goodbye. Maybe I would have asked permission to clear
vegetation before proceeding in the making of trails, forts and race tracks. And
afterwards, perhaps I would give thanks. I imagine a form of natural animism would
have been more present when considering the life in things. It is possible even my ability
to feel would have been greater as well. This is an important consideration given the
narrow boundaries of masculinity built around all males in the current Western zeitgeist.

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As a male in the United States, I was taught by society to be independent, tough,
brave, unemotional, powerful, and logical. My time in the Neshaminy woods was filled
with the practice of narrow and immature notions of manhood. My friends and I
overpowered the landscape with our playful labor. Remember, it was our domain. We
saw things through the lens of conquest and celebrated the degree to which we could
impose our will on the land. We were not working with, or within, the land to any degree.
That, would of course, require seeing the life in things and also the ability to feel some
sort of empathy. For the most part, showing emotion among other males was/is taboo. In
my group of male friends, one had to exude independence and essentially demand
intimidating respect to convey power among the other boys. In this way, my friends and I
playfully jockeyed for respect within the parameters of social masculinity standards.
I recall one specific childhood fort in the woods behind a friend’s house. It was
made of scraps of plywood stolen from a new development adjacent to our own. Groups
of adolescent boys would scrounge around construction dumpsters in hopes of finding the
best pieces of wood for building forts and ramps. The fort we built was a Broadway stage
for the performance of immature manhood rituals.
At one point, one of our friends had tacked up some pictures of scantily clad
women from an underwear section of a clothing catalog. This was all that was needed
before a competition was instigated among the "fellas" to see who could acquire the best
pictures to adorn the walls of our manly sanctuary. Before long, someone had gotten hold
of a Playboy magazine. And not much longer after that, the fort we had built showcased
wall-to-wall décor of scantily clad and nude women.

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I can’t remember the exact conversation between my friends and me in that
particular fort. However, I do remember the nature of it was not particularly healthy. We
would often talk about the women in those photos in heated debate as to who was the
“hottest” and what we would like to do to them if given the chance. Of course we had
never done any of those things, nor did we know how. We were simply parroting the
masculine talk learned from older boys at school, media, and in some cases, family.
It is ironic to me that my friends and I practiced an unhealthy version of
masculinity in such a sensuous place. The more-than-human world has been an archetype
of femininity extending deep into human history. Considering this, perhaps it is clear
why we acted the way we did. My friends and I were simply playing out masculine roles,
determined by a patriarchal society, within a symbol of femininity, the forest. The forest
was submissive to our actions just like women are typically labeled in an immature
patriarchy. To us, the more-than-human world invited our abuse simply through its
willingness to be subdued. Our actions were a mirror of larger western cultural values.
I see two pathological themes in my childhood relationship to the Neshaminy
woods: dualistic objectification and immature masculinity. These two threads in my
childhood behavior in the woods tangled together. My suppression of anything feminine
around my male friends allowed me to objectify life. For example, my apprehension to
express empathy, compassion, sensuality, and beauty around my friends fueled my ability
to objectify things that were obviously vivacious, like the frog I tortured. My illusory
sense of manhood numbed my senses. It made it difficult to fully immerse myself in the
spirit of the more-than-human world; and it concealed from me what it meant to be fully
human.

20. 20
My time in the Neshaminy woods near my house was confusing. My actions were
evidence of a dualistic faith and an eagerness to be a man in the eyes of western society.
Still, there were moments where I would be alone in the forest, as free as a field mouse to
wander with both my feet and mind. Those moments were mysterious, still, quiet, short
and authentic. Those were the moments when I would contemplate the Neshaminy
people. Those moments comprised the few instances when I was not acting out the role of
who I was conditioned to be as a young man. Yet, back then, they mostly went
unnoticed, for the person I thought I should be was cloaked in normalcy.
Lessons from Reposition
New interactions with the nonhuman world began where memories of the
Neshaminy faded. This transition was not abrupt, however. For a time, my Neshaminy
approach to the world endured into my late teens, becoming weaker and weaker by the
year. Simultaneously, new approaches to the more-than-human world grew stronger
beginning with the influence of my father and my subsequent experience working with
groups in the outdoors.
My introduction to outdoor recreation during high school came from my father.
He was, and still is, a white middle class American. My father recalled to me how he
played in the wooded outskirts of Trenton, New Jersey as a child. And if I recall
correctly, my grandfather also spun a few stories of how he used to camp and fish as a
youngster in Indiana. The males in my family had more of an influence in this regard. I
can’t say how or why my father approached wild places, or if he ever deeply thought

21. 21
about it. But, I do know that to the boy of me, he fostered senses of comfort, wonder, and
wellness within the outdoors.
A male heritage exists in my family that defines the outdoors as something to go
towards rather than shay away. Although it is quite superficial, it exists nonetheless.
Perhaps this heritage stemmed from the financial ability and time afforded to a middle
class social status. It could have also been the general subcultural permission given by
white middle class to explore wild places. Maybe the trend comes from the simple fact
that wild places were nearby and easily accessible. Nonetheless, the boy of me was
fortunate to develop on the receiving end of a healthy generational perception regarding
comfort within the more-than-human world. My father’s influence coupled with my time
in the Neshaminy woods ultimately gave me permission to eventually fall in love with the
more-than-human world and step away from the adopted notion of a less-then-human
world.
My father had introduced me to recreating in the outdoors. He showed me how to
backpack and rock climb when I was in high school. My father was not an overly
outdoorsy person and our excursions into the forest and mountains of Appalachia were
few. Yet, a few excursions was all it took for me to pursue it further.
The time I was spending in wild places was still unhealthily tainted despite the
progress I made towards increasing it. I had been an athlete my whole life up until my
junior year of college. I mostly played team sports like soccer and rugby. I learned social
skills and how to be a team player during my years of playing sports. I was also taught to
be competitive by team sports. The rock climbing and backpacking I was doing grew out

22. 22
of an approach that was competitive. I competed against my self, others, and even the
land itself; it supported my approach to outdoor recreation.
My relationship with the more-than-human world continued evolving when I
arrived at Northern Arizona University (NAU). I had arrived as a national exchange
student and was scheduled to spend two semesters at NAU before returning to East
Stroudsburg University. Deep down however, a part of me knew I would never go back.
For three years a scientific approach to the more-than-human world failed to
resonate with me. It felt superficial and the quality of time in the field did not match my
outdoor yearning. I quickly changed my major from environmental science to parks and
recreation midway through my junior year. I was delighted to find an outdoor education
emphasis in the parks and recreation department.
An outdoor leadership class was the first on my list to complete; it included a six-
day expedition. I consider this to be the beginning of my outdoor career. After
completing the outdoor leadership program, I went on to volunteer for the same program,
and eventually, taught the classes—I continue to do so today. Subsequently I also worked
as a river guide, Leave No Trace (LNT) master educator, Outward Bound instructor, and
as a NOLS instructor in the last ten years. It was recently that my approach to wild places
began to shift.
An evolution in my approach to wild places is shown through my relationship
with Kanab Creek. Kanab creek is a place where I often travel with students for the NAU
outdoor leadership program. It is where my instructors took me as a student. Nine years
later—and perhaps a dozen more visits—I see things differently every time I return to

23. 23
Kanab Creek. Each visit is a compilation of the many lenses of perception through which
I have seen this place. From my twenty-one year old mind to my thirty-two year old
mind, I can see the process of maturation in my approach to the more-than-human world
in the Kanab Creek landscape. And in the ten years of perceptions of its landscape is the
reflection of the evolution of my own mindscape. I enjoy scrolling through the many
layers of myself upon each return. My approach to this place is captured in an essay that I
wrote in tribute to Kanab Creek. This essay marks a turning point in how I perceived the
more-than-human world.
Lessons from Kanab Creek
It is late May, and final exams have ended at Northern Arizona University. The
van is crammed with sleepy college students heading from Flagstaff to the Grand
Canyon’s North Rim. The high desert is blooming after a recent thunderstorm. Patches of
orange Globe mallow and yellow Primrose dot the landscape. Our destination is Kanab
Creek Wilderness. My first trip, nine years ago, was as a student; now I am the instructor.
We zip past the flowers while distant rusty cliffs float by.
I thumbed through memories of my first Kanab Creek trip, practicing leadership
skills while carrying heavy packs. The canyons were our classroom. My first impressions
were of the convoluted drainages and towering red cliffs that were foreign to this boy
from Philadelphia. Yet, somehow, it felt like a homecoming. The memories were
comforting; my eyes closed and I fell asleep.
Ruts in the washboard road jar me awake. My eyes open. A new landscape
spreads out before me: a maze of windswept walls, rocky knobs, potholes, and alcoves.

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The van stops and its doors swing open. We are at the top of Jump Up Canyon, our entry
point into Kanab Creek, the largest drainage on the Grand Canyon’s north rim. Kanab
Creek cuts a network of gorges hundreds and thousands of feet into the Kaibab Plateau.
It is the largest and most beautiful office a person could work in.
Now, I facilitate students on their own adventures in Kanab Creek. I make sure
nobody gets injured, initiate discussion, assign grades, prevent students from burning
their food, and patch up the predictable blisters. I facilitate the learning of many lessons;
however, I certainly don’t provide the most important lessons students receive during
these adventures.
The real lessons are delivered by Kanab Creek. Here, I am both teacher and
student. The poet William Stafford (2011) says, “The earth says have a place/ be what
that place requires.” My place is Kanab Creek, and I am always learning what it requires
me to be.
Kanab Creek requires visitors to enter a new “headspace.” Grades, girl/boy
friends, cell phones, social drama, appearances etc., are no longer significant. What
matters is finding water, eating enough calories, and sleeping on a flat surface. Void of
usual urban distractions, the canyon country opens itself up to careful notice.
After signing the Ranger Trail register, we begin cutting down the switchbacks
into Jump Up Canyon. A hawk screeches. I know that hawk. It greets me at the beginning
of every hike into this canyon.
The bare walls are sun-baked, and clear of vegetation. Signs of early human use
are everywhere. We pass cold water spilling from a rancher’s pipe and some pictographs

25. 25
painted on a smooth rock canvas. I stop to pick up a familiar spearhead lying below a
panel of rock art. The white spearhead is the size of my palm, made of opaque chert. I
run my fingers along the chipped, serrated edge, before hiding it under a rock. Pausing, I
contemplate sharing the spearhead with my students. I decide to keep the experience for
myself and hurry to catch-up with the group.
While hiking in the rear, I try to imagine the long-gone peoples of this place and
the infinite number of human moments—births, deaths, love affairs and wars—that have
played out here. I want to know their connections to the land. Is that even possible?
I have never known any place as intimately as the locals of Kanab Creek knew
theirs. My childhood connections with place are strong. I can easily recall smells,
feelings, and details of growing up in Philadelphia, but the early people who lived in
Kanab Creek surely had deeper and more complex understandings of place. The familiar
daily routines of family and community were probably similar then and now. But the old-
timers and ancients had more stores of knowledge about the natural environment–
weather, geology, the life cycles of plants, and the habits of animals. They needed this
knowledge to survive. Early people experienced a deep harmony with their environment.
It was their home.
People nowadays rely on modern convenience, and approach the more-than-
human world as tourists. Kanab Creek seems to forgive us as we head further down
canyon. A yellow clump of Cottonwood leaves outstanding in the red and brown desert
backdrop welcomes us. Soon we reach the Esplanade, a red slick rock bench that outlines
the sub-drainages of Kanab Canyon.

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Red slick rock allows for quicker travel. I break a healthy sweat. Our group
shades up under one of many mushroom-like mounds of red rock. I sip water and marvel
at the view: a bowl of land, the shear sides of which plummet down to form slot canyons.
The sun has dropped to just twenty degrees above the horizon; less than an hour and a
half of daylight remains. It’s time to move on.
We choose a camp at the head of a slick-rock drainage. Two 40-foot mushroom-
like rocks stand side-by-side, casting shade in the center of a slick rock depression. Packs
hit the ground with a thud. A Canyon Wren lets out a descending crescendo, as if
laughing at our vulnerability. The group sits in a circle to divide up camp chores and talk
about the day. I take time to read Lao Tzu (2011) to the students:
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey
and acclaim him, worse when they despise him....But of a good leader who talks
little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’
After the reading, students disperse and I remain sitting, drifting into thought. We
practice outdoor leadership skills hoping to model Lao Tzu’s quote. Kanab Creek easily
accomplishes this by teaching both firmly and silently. I have experienced this many
times. While visiting these canyons, life lessons are subtly slipped into our minds, left to
germinate over time. After our adventure, my students and I will eventually have a
feeling of personal growth and increased maturity. The complexities of life seem simpler.
Students rarely know whom to credit for such a learning experience, sometimes saying,
“We learned this ourselves.” Other times, they credit me. I no longer fail to recognize the
more-than-human world as teacher. The grace in her delivery of knowledge amazes me.

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A student interrupts my thoughts, asking me where to fill the water bottles. I
direct her down canyon where seasonal potholes of water sit quietly in the soft red
sandstone. Floodwaters and rocky debris have sculpted these holes. Pebbles trapped in
small holes – over geologic time– scour progressively larger holes into the rock. I decide
to walk down canyon to check the supply of water.
Thirsty animals from all over the Esplanade rely on this water, just as we do this
evening. This shared dependency brings a smile to my face. I feel a part of this place. The
air cools as I walk down canyon. I smell water.
I kneel next to a full pothole, feeling the silence and my solitude. Small critters—
tadpoles and “boatman bugs”–swim in the water. In a few days or weeks, the smaller
potholes will evaporate and the critters living in them will have to adapt or die, just as I
do.
The more-than-human world teaches experientially, providing direct feedback for
your actions. The lessons learned in Kanab Creek are applicable to the moment. If water
bugs fail to adapt to their environment, their offspring will not survive. If I don’t drink
enough water, I will become dehydrated, feeling the effects immediately. Discomfort and
death stare at you more intently in this place, the consequences are real. These types of
lessons are hard to find in the front country—it takes a long time for the signs of
dehydration to set in when sitting on the couch—and are seldom applicable.
Classroom education is mostly intellectual theory not seen in practice.
Experiential education—staring at tadpoles in Kanab Creek Wilderness, say—affects me

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on many levels—mental, physical, and emotional. I hold dear the lessons I receive here.
They progressively shape my character, ethics, and philosophy.
The sun is going down. I walk back to camp sure that there will be plenty of
water. My solitude is slowly lifted as I approach our little band of travelers. Steaming
pots and the clanking of kitchenware alert me to start cooking.
I eat a big bowl of Mac and Cheese and crawl into my sleeping bag. I am the last
to go to sleep. A clear sky means this will be a cold night; I stare at the stars. I am happy
to be back in Kanab Creek. I am honored to have the opportunity to apprentice under
such a wise leader and to learn from such a perfect teacher. I think about the days ahead,
hoping for more of the pleasures and insights today has delivered. I catch my mind
drifting toward the future and try to reel it in. The effort costs me what’s left of my
consciousness. My eyes fall shut and the dream world welcomes me home.
Lessons from Reflection
An unexpected shift in my being entered my awareness during my ten years of
leading others into wild places. I began to suspect that I had matured as a direct result of
my cumulative time outside. A deepening had occurred whereby going outside became
much more than simply relieving stress and engaging in recreation. It was therapeutic; it
was a crucible for personal transformation. Through my time in wild places, something
began to slowly stir in my gut, and before I knew it, the place from which I lived my life
had shifted.
A gradual awareness arrived surrounding the effects of my exposure to the more-
than-human world. Slowly I began to see my values shift and mature. Although I could

29. 29
not observe myself developing under the silent guidance of the Natural world, it
eventually became clear.
I began my outdoor education work with little knowledge of my convictions other
than the enjoyment I found in the activities I preformed there. I liked the challenge found
in facing fears, pushing limits and adventuring. I also enjoyed helping others discover
these things during our expeditions. I was proud when my groups overcame obstacles
accompanying long hard days. As a leader I regarded myself as a mentor exuding a
tolerance for adversity. I saw my self as cleverly dancing on the edge of my physical
limits in order to become more proficient in outdoor skills. I studied and practiced
primitive skills, rock climbing, paddling and backpacking. I wanted to be a competent
outdoor leader. I now see this approach as being quite egocentric.
Softer aspects unexpectedly began to emerge into my approach to outdoor
education with further experience. I started to see student experiences with more clarity. I
still valued the challenge, but I also began to appreciate the challenges of effective
communication in all its varieties. I became interested in the physics of group dynamics.
And, I began to care about and see student experiences in a deeper way than before. I
could relate to them. We all shared tutelage under a much larger teacher, although I was
teaching them to some extent. The teacher in this case was the more-than-human world.
I am humbled when realizing that I do more pointing towards lessons than
teaching of lessons. That is to indicate that the lessons found in the more-than-human
world do not begin with words, but begin with individual experience. I call these lessons
“felt lessons.” Felt lessons indicate that the knowing and learning from lessons in the

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wild are primarily conveyed through feelings not words. In that way, it is difficult to
describe or teach them using words. Instead, I try to point towards these lessons by
offering opportunities to experience.
I do not provide students with learning experiences. I simply facilitate rare—at
least in modern times—opportunities to follow their own initiative towards more spiritual
experiences in wild places. I merely point students towards opportunities that will allow
them to open up to lessons that can only be taught by the more-than-human world. To
some, the skills I teach represent the end of the lesson. Yet, to me, the outdoor lessons—
such as backpacking skills, leadership, and education—are simply a vehicle that motions
towards something greater, an opportunity to escape the influences of a fast paced world,
if only for a short moment, to absorb the felt lessons instilled by the influences of the
wild.
I had a sense that deep lessons were being delivered to the students and me
through the environment at this point in my career. Through observation, I suspected that
students, and my self, were thinking and feeling more deeply in wild places than in the
front country. Yet, I could not put my finger on specific lessons nor could I put words to
the process. To describe the lessons was difficult. I lacked words for what they felt like.
In turn, I simply created time and space for students to experience the natural world. I
facilitated discussions that I hoped would open students towards a reorientation of how
they saw themselves in wild places. I offered experiences that helped slow student minds
and focus student senses on the place they found them selves in at that moment. I offered
to make students present in wild places and hoped that they would do the rest.

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The circumstances laying behind the taught lessons and felt lessons
aforementioned reminds me of an old Buddhist story. In the story the moon represents an
aspect of enlightenment, a lesson if you will. The teacher’s goal is to have students
experience the moon—easier said than done, for enlightenment is a difficult thing to
describe. He does this by pointing with his finger at the moon. But the finger draws all
student attention when held up. And as the students place their eyes on the finger of the
teacher, they miss the lesson; for the finger is not the moon no matter how well it points.
I strive for my lessons to be the finger that points at the moon.
The story above does a fine job at indicating the difficulty in trying to orient a
student’s center of feeling towards the correct direction in order to increase the chances
of learning the felt lessons of the wild—especially when I was still very confused about
the process in myself. To really see the “moon”, or the felt lessons of the wild, students
have to first look and then experience it for themselves with an open mind using all their
senses. Their participation has to come from within their own initiative or the lessons
cannot be taught. Consequently, a seed can be planted whereby lessons in personal
development will germinate from within.
I found that one of the best places to point towards the deeper lessons of the more-
than-human world occur during nightly debrief. Part of the outdoor leadership field
curriculum at Northern Arizona University and many other organizations involves a
nightly debrief. This is a time when the group comes together to reflect on the day’s
events to make space for healthy communication among participants, and to celebrate our
humanness. It is easily one of my favorite aspects of working with others outside.

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A typical evening meeting on any given night in the field usually commences
after dinner at dusk, extending into a darkening night. Desert evening temperatures can
drop quickly and our band of travelers sometime scramble to pile on extra layers of
clothes before sitting in a tight circle. I usually request that everyone adjusts their
position in the circle so all can make instant eye contact with any other person.
Occasionally, a source of light is placed in the middle of the circle to help convey a sense
of ambiance and ritual. Soon after commencement, logistics are reviewed before each
student has a chance to share their favorite moments of that day and give constructive
feedback to peer leaders.
My imagination never fails to step back and observe our group from an outside
perspective before being swept away. My mind’s eye pans out, and I see a vast desert
landscape full of nightly energies: moon shadows, cool desert winds, shooting stars, and
of course, the silence falling between the voices of our group members. The absence of
singing birds and chirping insects make for a musing and quiet air. From this vantage
point I see a group of people huddled around a single light whose glow beacons in the
nightly abyss and is echoed by an infinite blanket of stars above.
I often ponder the significance behind how long humans have been sitting in
circles around an illuminated center. I imagine them communicating with the kind of
wonder and thoughtfulness that can only be inspired by a clear view of the cosmos
overhead. No setting inspires more awe than when the blue lens of sky fades giving way
to an image of undisputable circumstantial clarity. The night sky image clearly speaks of
our shared human circumstance within the mysterious and incomprehensible cosmos; it is
the hub from which some of the deepest thoughts extend.

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Although I have no quantitative proof, I feel that many students share this sense
of positive and mysterious energy during these kinds of evening meetings—or at least the
opportunity is clearly offered to them. My assumptions are not derived at random,
however. I have figured upon this shared experience based on common student behavior.
I see in them a sense of awareness, seriousness, and depth exuded in their comments and
reflections. It is as if upon introduction to a circle—one far removed from the influences
of civilization—students have an opportunity to tap into a much older and collective
memory. Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious. It represents collective memories
formed from repetitive events of our ancestors that we have all inherited over time.
Without context, students often convey that they feel this experience is natural,
comfortable and good. Subsequently, it seems students communicate with an authenticity
like never before. It is evident to me that some part of them has communicated in a circle
around a fire in the wilderness before.
I often think of our nightly debriefs as adventures in communication. How often
do people get to really speak and know they are being heard, especially by multiple
people? Students are empowered to communicate as genuinely as they would like when
given the chance to speak uninterrupted. Student words find definition and clarity when
cast into still night air. They are engulfed by surrounding silence and peer attention. In
this way, meaning stands out more easily and emotion is more clearly conveyed.
Another source of reflection and deep thoughts occurs when moving at a slower
pace. In retrospect, I feel that felt lessons depend upon pace of life. Moving fast numbs
opportunities for felt lessons, making them impossible to learn. In my time instructing
and learning in the wild places, I began to adore walking slowly.

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Traveling by foot is therapeutic. The groups I work with walk, paddle, and climb
their way around the environment for weeks. This pace is much different than what most
westerners are used to. Moving at seventy-five miles per hour is almost a daily
occurrence for many in the civilized world. Some even commute a couple hours a day at
this speed, and others work as pilots, bus drivers and engineers moving quickly all the
while.
A slow pace points towards the opening of senses for me. At a slower pace my
senses become more attuned to my surroundings. Birds scratching their feet on the
ground, the sound of a dripping spring, the wind, and even the ancient perfume of older
human inhabitants become both easy and delightful to focus on. This was the pace I
followed as a child pondering the Neshaminy people. Wendell Berry touches upon this
notion in his essay, An Entrance Into the Woods:
…Although I am here in body, my mind and my nerves too are not yet altogether
here. We seem to grant to our high-speed roads and our airlines the rather
thoughtless assumption that people can change places as rapidly as their bodies
can be transported. That, as my own experience keeps proving to me, is not
true...Once off the freeway, my pace gradually slowed, as the road became
progressively more primitive, from seventy miles an hour to a walk. And now,
here at my camping place, I have stopped altogether. But my mind is still keyed to
seventy miles an hour and have come here so fast, it is still busy with the work I
am usually doing…When the Indians and the first white hunters entered this
country they were altogether here as soon as they arrived, for they had seen the
experience fully everything between here and their starting place, and so the

35. 35
transition was gradual and articulate in their consciousness. Our senses, after all,
were developed to function at foot speeds; and the transition from foot travel to
motor travel, in terms of evolutionary time, has been abrupt. The faster one goes,
the more strain there is on the senses, the more they fail to take in, the more
confusion they must tolerate or gloss over—and the longer it takes to bring the
mind to a stop in the presence of anything (Elder & Finch 2002 718-729).
The slowing of my travel seeps into other aspects of my world as well. I find my
mind also slows down. Anxiety around schedules and future events fade. The pace at
which I prepare a meal slows too. I think I even talk slower when teaching a lesson
outside versus the classroom. The rate of nearly everything I do is slow, and why not,
everything in wilderness moves at a more natural pace. When I find myself in such a
place, I become entrained with its experiential gait.
In the more-than-human world, most everything moves slower than the moving
parts of civilization. The contrast hits hard upon reentry from the wilderness to
civilization. This recognition in myself was one of the first clues pointing my awareness
towards acknowledging the evolution in my relationship with the more-than-human
world.
Coming home from the field is always exciting. Music seems more moving, food
tastes savory, and a bed is more comfortable. It is as if someone sprinkled MSG onto all
available comforts in life, and I have to ask, “What’s the catch?”
When coming back to Flagstaff, or any other town, stimuli increases, the pace
quickens, and I struggle to make the transition. The difficulty of reentry is becoming

36. 36
harder and harder for me. Now and days, I have to take a day off upon return before
stepping onto the fast treadmill of western life. During the in-between time, when I have
a foot in each world, I see things more clearly; I can reflect upon the things I learned in
the wild.
Ecospiritual Lessons
Ecospirituality is a spirituality disconnected from religion. It can be considered an
altered state of consciousness where a person may experience a higher sense of self, inner
feelings, inner knowledge, awareness, and attainment to the world and one’s place in it.
Ecospirituality is an embodied knowledge of personal relations and the relationship to the
environment, or a belief in a power greater than imaginable (Fox 1995 1). After years of
working with others in wild places I have begun to feel a sense of ecospirituality in my
own body. It is difficult to ignore.
My own consciousness has experienced visceral shifts that have greatly swayed
my way of being in a more sustainable and healthy direction. Using the words “felt
lesson” to describe the causes behind these shifts in consciousness moves my notion
towards the spiritual. The foundation of these felt lessons often rests upon the
interconnectedness and dynamic phenomenology inherent in the natural world. The
combination of felt lessons born from the metaphysical characteristics found in nature is
what establishes the coining of ecospirituality.
The change in consciousness I have experienced includes shifts in the way I know
and my way of being. My time in the more-than-human world has taught me there are
more ways of knowing extending beyond the cognitive and rational. Humanity has placed

37. 37
some considerable weight upon feeling as a way of knowing throughout religious history.
Yet, somewhere down the line of western (his)story, humans stopped feeling into the
earth as a way of knowing, followed by the eventual delegitimization of feeling
altogether. Instead, feeling as a way of knowing was both marginalized and strictly
extended towards things transcendent, not earthly. I learned another way of knowing
without the use of words and language despite the western cultural construction under
which my original way of knowing was adopted.
Experiences in the more-than-human world, these visceral shifts in knowing and
being, have delivered lessons that do not require cognitive understanding to be embodied.
I feel linked to these lessons by way of emotions running through every somatic part of
me. They conjure up feelings of passion, conviction, truth, and love that stand behind
them in affirmation. In this way they are more powerful than nearly any idea I have ever
learned. They have influenced my actions more than any concept has ever done before.
This is not to say that concepts are useless; I am merely recognizing the potency
in which an emotion can ineffably foster a change in personal being. Admittedly, it is
valuable to have both emotion and conceptual understanding regarding personal
transformation from a reconnection with the more-than-human world. But, you must have
both; and if I only had to pick one, I would choose feeling over thinking as a base for
knowing. I feel my opinion stands in contrast to that of contemporary western society
who appear to only choose thinking concepts as their base of understanding. I feel
fortunate to have first felt the emotional aspect of transformation followed by conceptual.

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In my ten years of teaching outdoor education I learned and taught parallel to my
students. While I taught lessons from the curriculum, we all learned the felt lessons from
the more-than-human world. Although the usual objective was to have fun and challenge
us through wilderness pursuits, I witnessed personal growth over and over again in both
myself and my students that exceeded the intentions of the curriculum. I witnessed
myself, and supposedly my students, scrape aside cultural and personal boundaries to
make room for the expression of a deep understanding that humans are nature—
something many have forgotten in the last two-hundred years. I can only posit that our
time in the wilderness played a factor in this awareness.
This way of being and knowing is not emphasized in contemporary western
culture. And it is no wonder I felt marginalized amongst other people in the front country.
I simply felt different from others and couldn’t understand why. All I was certain of was
that my experiences in the more-than-human world helped shape who I was in a most
beautiful way with no explanations. In an effort to better understand the confusion of my
feelings, I sought guidance from those who understood. I was looking for context.
In the spring of 2009, I attended a five-day workshop from an organization named
Animas Valley Institute. They specialize in, what they call, “Soulcraft.” Put more
academically, Animas Valley helps people to explore experiential eco-depth-psychology.
Without going to far into their approach—which I will indentify later—Animas Valley
provides context and techniques for understanding the felt lessons of the wild that I had
been grappling with for so long. My experiences working with them illuminated the
transition in my relationship with the wild.

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The feelings I have always had in wild places blossomed following the
completion of four Animas Valley workshops, extensive reading on related subjects, and
also taking an ecopsychology graduate class at Naropa University. Contextual
understanding of my emotions in the wild ensued as a result.
My current relationship with the more-than-human world has approached
numinous proportions. Wild areas—and more recently nearly any area—are a place to
extend my ecospiritual self into an awareness of interconnectivity between all living
things. Bill Plotkin (2003) describes a scale of spirituality in his book, Nature and the
Human Soul. On one end lies the spiritual, and on the other lies the soul (23-30). This
idea helped me understand many felt lessons in the more-than-human world.
I often sit in the woods behind my house in Flagstaff as a way to slow down. My
typical practice includes a focused awareness on the place I am in; I begin by focusing on
my breath. Ensuing feelings of calmness are common. Additionally, a sense of place
often arises. By that, I mean to say that I feel a belonging to the place I am in. My
anthropocentric mind loosens its grip and a humility sweeps over me. I feel that my right
to live on this planet is no greater, or less than, any other living thing. Which life is more
valuable, human or plankton? My answer is neither. A common ground exists among all
things whereby we are all extensions of the earth. We all function on shared energy that
ultimately comes from the sun. Everything has managed to emerge out of this earth in a
similar way. Subsequently, a familial sentiment rises in me including all things. During
moments like this, I feel at home no matter where I am on this planet. Metaphorically,
this notion of commonality between all things feels like many individual waves on a
single ocean. Here, individual waves are all bound by water to create their many forms;

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the waves appear and disappear into the same body from where they once were. In this
way, all things are connected, all notions of individuality feel softer. To me, this is the
spiritual pole on Plotkin’s scale. More specifically, it is ecospirituality.
Spirituality, in any variety, tends to be an outward expression towards all things
and their common experience and circumstances. However, another feeling follows
spirituality that is quite different. This is the experience of soul.
In my experience, soul focuses on the individual. Soul is an inward notion as
opposed the outward nature of spirit. It is not transcendent, but “inscendent,” as Berry
(1988) terms it (211). Soul resides in the unconscious field of energy both individually
and collectively. It is an authentic voice in our unconsciousness that communicates
through metaphor, symbols, and signs. Soul is a birthright instilled in all humans upon
their first spark of consciousness. Unfortunately, this voice is repressed and
misunderstood by humans. Consequently, the soulful voice often acts as a teacher to our
already-established identity. It communicates what needs to be recognized in ourselves to
progress on a path of wellness. Jung called this individuation.
Like spirituality, soul works through feeling, not thinking. Soul emerges through
imagination and emotional expression. It appears during times of contemplation of inner
feelings. Soul requires the ability to unabashedly self express emotional energy. Soul can
speaks to us through the interpretation of the more-than-human world. In this way, the
more-than-human world can offer a fantastic escape from culture for the purposes of
soulful self-discovery. Soul stands in contrast to what is culturally acceptable—given that

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public acts of self-expression are generally frowned upon in western society. My first
experience with soul is a story that will help convey my ideas of what soul is to me.
It was the spring of 2009 when I surprisingly found myself at a Buddhist retreat.
For five days, I spent periodic hours sitting in a small grove of trees near Santa Cruz,
California. I was on an Animas Valley workshop. The founder and creator Bill Plotkin,
along with some assistants, led the workshop. I had read his book, Nature and the Human
Soul, and had a vague idea of what kind of work it requires.
The name of the retreat center was called the Vajrapani Institute. Although our
business was not Buddhist in nature, it made for a spectacular setting. Bright green moss
hung like drapes from tree limbs. Massive tree trunks pushed upwards nearly blocking
out the blue sky. This place seemed like a cathedral to me. The entire place seeped with
quiet stillness, even the retreat building and its diligent volunteers. There was plenty of
auditory space to focus upon the intricate sounds all around: streams trickling, leaves
rustling, wind blowing, birds singing and a residue of mindfulness could be felt in the air.
The setting of this place stood in firm contrast to familiar dry ponderosa pine forests and
deserts of Flagstaff that I was used to. I was out of my element and rightfully so; the
transition in scenery symbolized the difference between my arriving state of mind and the
inexorable sampling of a new way of knowing I was about to experience.
I wandered and sat in the more-than-human world during the course of those five
days. We were instructed to feel as deeply as we could, and whatever feelings emerged in
our bodies was what we should work with. For four days I had very little success
compared to other participants. It seemed as if my peers were having life changing

42. 42
epiphanies and identifying deep psychological wounds to work on. I, on the other hand,
simply felt relaxed and happy.
I was making new friends and enjoying the time alone in the more-than-human
world to reflect and let go of the mundane mind habits I had arrived with. Part of me
disassociated from the other people there. They were older, had more problems, and had
not spent as much time in the outdoors as I had. Perhaps, I thought, there was nothing for
me to work on. Maybe my time in wild places had healed my psychological wounds.
Considering this, I told people I was participating in the name of research for my thesis.
This is the way it unfolded for me until the fifth day.
My group of peers met on the fourth morning with one of the Animas guides
before being sent off once again to wander in the surrounding woods, feeling as we went
along. My guide, Jade, had instructed that I go stalking in the woods. When I questioned
what she meant, she simply instructed me to do what I think stalking would entail. And
so I did just that.
Walking through the woods I began trying to hone in on my instincts. I imagined
that I was a predator on the trail of I don’t know what. I moved through the trees quickly,
breathing heavily and stomping the dried leaves under my feet. Before long, I was on all
fours running up a hill as if I were a wild animal. I came to an old dirt road and stood on
it for a while; it felt foreign to me in the moment. The front of a car surprised me as it
turned the corner. Without thinking, I dashed towards the forest and frantically ran for a
few hundred yards. Stopping to catch my breath, I remember feeling momentarily like I
understood the stress and fear an animal must feel when faced with fast and loud

43. 43
instruments of human civilization. When I saw that car, or perhaps a symbol of my
civilized self, I was frightened and could not escape its presence fast enough. My heart
pounded and I took off in a random direction. I continued wandering in the woods.
I laid down to rest under a tree and it started to drizzle. The sound of rain
smacking broad leaves above made sporadic popping sounds and it lulled me into the
present moment. Lying on my back, feelings associated with people close to me began to
flood my thoughts. There were feelings of sadness associated with them. My thoughts
then began to shift towards the earth as a whole, and again, feelings of sadness entered
my body. I made sure to feel them deeply, but they made no sense to me; they were
mysterious.
I told Jade that I had experienced some sadness that morning, but I was not sure
where it came from or what it was about. Her instructions were simple. She told me to go
to the spot in the trees where I had been sitting all week long and engage the pain brought
about by the sadness. I went out to my spot to sit and feel later that night.
My spot was chosen after a day of wandering in the forest earlier on in the
workshop. It was a dark depression in the land surrounded by four large trees and was
home to one large black mushroom. I usually directed my attention at one specific tree
that seemed wiser than the rest—we had been instructed to animate the things found in
the forest. I had been talking to this tree for four days strait and had gotten no answers.
Up until that point, I must admit, I thought it was quite a hokey practice. Nonetheless, I
continued talking to this tree, telling it how I felt, reading it poetry, thanking it for
listening, and also praising it for its beauty.

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On the final night I sat down with my tree with the intention of carrying out
Jade’s instructions. I sat for a long time trying to engage the pain, but nothing came up. I
revisited all the thoughts I had the previous day in order to conjure up emotion, still no
success. At last, I began pleading with the tree to help me find the emotion I felt
yesterday. I pleaded until I began to feel saddened by the effort I was putting out. I sat
still and cried; I thought perhaps I had failed.
Suddenly, I felt of ball of energy form in my body. It began in my gut, traveled
through my chest and preceded up my throat. When it reached my mouth, a stream of
words began unconsciously pouring from it; they felt like they had originated from
somewhere other than my mind—where they usually originate. What came out astounded
me. The content included a detailed self-diagnosis describing the pain I felt and its origin.
The words did not describe a circumstance that I had ever thought about before, nor
would I have admitted had been an issue if told by anyone other than that tree. I wept
heavily as truth poured off my tongue; not knowing the birthplace of these words. It was
overwhelming; it was foreign.
The pain I had been dealing with was related to my father. The previous day,
someone had asked Bill Plotkin about the saddest wound he had seen in a participant.
Although he could not recall the saddest, he did recount a woman who, in a recent
workshop, said she had never told her child that she loved them. To Plotkin, that was
very sad. I remember feeling lucky that I did not have to deal with such wounds.
However, at that moment under the tree, I realized that I was the child who had never
been told he was loved.

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My father had never been shown much intimate affection from his father.
Consequently, he carried out that wound upon me. I was now in the position of facing
and feeling one of the largest generational wounds on the male side of my family. For
nearly twenty-eight years I had carried out this generational wound, barely letting the
words, “I love you” pass my lips towards anyone I truly cared about.
Afterwards, I decided that this new insight needed to be shared with others. I
needed it to be witnessed so that the energy of it could be further purged from my mind. I
would tell the entire group during the closing ceremony the next morning.
Two revolutionary things occurred upon standing in front of thirty other
participants in the closing ceremony while telling them my story. I cried harder than I had
ever cried in my adult life in front of people I had just barely met, and I opened myself up
to expressing love for the first time by asking each person for a hug and telling them that
I loved them. The latter step was meant to enforce the emotion of love towards the child
of me who waited quietly for twenty-eight years to hear those words.
After leaving the retreat, I made a point to call my father. Bill had said that it was
one thing to encounter emotional wounds but it was another to directly act towards
healing by ignoring all the voices in my head that were deathly afraid to change my
behavior regarding this issue.
The phone rang and my mother picked up. After a few moments of conversation, I
asked for my Dad. My heart was pounding, the voices—of my false ego—in my head
were screaming, and I had to pull the car over. I told him that I wanted to make a new
rule between us. I told him that I wanted us to tell each other that we loved one another

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when we spoke from now on. His voiced paused; he said his father never told him those
words either. I knew that my words had lifted a veil for my father, illuminating the full
cycle of the generational wound. I imagine that he was simultaneously sad and happy;
sad, because of the realization that I had been wounded by his wound; happy, because he
had never heard those words come from my mouth. Although, this single moment did not
create a squeaky clean relationship between my father and me, full of affectionate
memories, it was an unprecedented change in direction for us both.
Telling my father that I loved him was both hard and easy. I always hear the
voices telling me not to do so, however these days, they are quieter. Following every time
I tell him that I love him, I always ask myself, “What was all the fuss about? That was
easy and it feels good.” Yet in the words of Bob Marley, “Every man thinks his burden is
the heaviest; who feels it knows it, lord.” I am well aware that other people deal with
more horrible things than I do (rape, injustice, war, murder, etc.). However, this wound is
mine, and to me, it was a difficult one to confront.
I wrote a poem, years later, that was inspired by a potent dream I had. I think the
dream was directed at the boy in me who could not express love along with all the other
parts of me that I am afraid to meet and do not currently know. I called it, Thanksgiving
with Lions:
On the shores of my life
Where water caresses
Foundation. Intuition washes
over identity. Passing through the porous
bedrock of myself. Seeping into soul

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I have thanksgiving with lions
This is surprising to say the least
For it is lions who usually feast
upon me. Tearing flesh, exposing bone
Spilling secrets whispered into morrow
Sending me running for my life
Yet, this time fear has fled and I remain
Indulging on my own bag of skin
and muscle. The lions and I
feast together. Half crazed,
I am driven by conviction
I gnaw at my flesh
exposing secrets locked in bone
I come to, and look around
Wiping clean my red mouth
embarrassed
Does this make me a lion?
Or am I more myself than ever?
What other monsters can I break bread with?
I wonder what other soul lessons await me in the more-than-human world, the
reflection of my true self. I did not know what lurked in my unconscious shadow until I
shined the light of awareness upon it through the unbiased lens of the more-than-human
world. I also wonder how many men in this society deal with the same collective wound,

48. 48
the notion that men cannot express vulnerable emotion. Who would have thought, a tree
gave all this healing and insight to me after talking with it for only four days.
Naturally, I am intrigued with this kind of work. It had simultaneously benefitted
me, my father, the other participants in feeling my story, and most of all, the more-than-
human world. How can I not see a tree the same way again? Granted, some would say
that the tree was a projection of my parental self and that it actually did nothing.
However, I think it goes deeper than that when combining both the spiritual and soulful
aspects of the process. I can no longer look at a tree and see a “thing.” Trees now take on
an ancient wisdom for me. They—and most any other thing living as close to its true
nature as possible—can be teachers if you take the time to listen.
Wild places have birthed an identity in me exceeding the illusions of civilization.
My relationship with the more-than-human world has offered many opportunities to
venture to the edge of myself. I was not very spiritual for most of my life; and then, I
found it outside. I was also not very soulful for most of my life; and then, I found it
outside as well. I was raised in a strict catholic environment where the spirituality was
preached to me. But outside, spirituality was gradually born out of me in relationship to
the more-than-human world. It began as a confusing feeling and evolved into an
understood practice.
Perhaps I am now a little bit closer to understanding the Neshaminy people who
once lived in the forest near my childhood house, perhaps not. Either way, I have come a
long way in my relationship with more-than-human world, with myself. I still feel the
pain of the frog the boy of me tortured nearly two decades ago with a bb gun. But, I

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understand it much better these days. The death of that frog is like looking into a mirror
for me now.

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Chapter 2
Literature Review
The World is Your Mirror
The faults you find in others, are your faults as well.
After all, to recognize something you must know it.
The possibilities you see in others, are possible for you as well. The beauty you see
around you, is your beauty. The world around you is a reflection, a mirror showing you
the person you are.
To change your world, you must change yourself. To blame and complain will only make
matters worse. Whatever you care about, is your responsibility. What you see in others,
shows you yourself.
See the best in others, and you will be your best. Give to others, and you give to yourself.
Appreciate beauty, and you will be beautiful. Admire creativity, and you will be creative.
Love, and you will be loved. Seek to understand, and you will be understood. Listen, and
your voice will be heard. Teach, and you will learn.
~Unknown author (Sikh Philosophy Network 2011)
Introduction
There is growing evidence that people derive ecospiritual benefits from outdoor
experiences (Hientzman 2007; Fredrickson & Anderson 1999; R.J. Fox 1997; Ellard et.

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al. 2009; Marsh 2008; Daniel 2007; Griffin & Leduc 2009; Anderson & Hanley 1996;
Lasenby 2003; Williams & Harvey 2001; Stringer & McAvoy 1992). While personal
development is a priority for most outdoor organizations, most traditional curricula do
not offer understanding for ecospiritual experiences in nature. It is interesting to ask why
curricula fails to consider ecospiritual understanding despite evidence for such
experiences by outdoor program participants. I propose that content and practices of
nonwestern metaphysics and models of human development are needed within outdoor
education because it will create a more complete understanding of participant
experiences. Better understanding can be attained by creating a system of understanding
within outdoor education that seeks to recognize and understand moments of
ecospirituality reported by participants. Inquiry into emerging fields of study that
incorporate ecopsychological metaphysics is critical towards the inclusion and
recognition of ecospiritual benefits linked to outdoor education. It is possible that
ecopsychology is such a field of study and could offer a language that is useful in
understanding ecospiritual experiences.
Evidence for Ecospiritual Benefits in Outdoor Education
Outdoor education has grown both in size and acceptance since the early part of
the 20th
century. It began with organizations like Outward Bound and the Boy Scouts.
Today, there are hundreds of schools, programs, and organizations that specialize in
outdoor education.
While many participate in outdoor education programs for a variety of reasons,
personal development has emerged as a primary motivation for enrolling in such courses–

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perhaps, in part, due to its positive success in this regard. Current outdoor education
philosophy adopts ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Dewey, all of whom
advocate for character development in education (Wurdinger 1995 14-39). Personal
transformation, maturation, and development are themes that go hand in hand with
spending time in wild places, away from civilization and closer to a natural life rhythm.
However, when people ask, “Why wilderness fosters development,” they are often left
bereft of understanding. Shooter (2010) supports this notion saying, “From a broader
perspective, the body of empirically informed adventure education literature offers
evidence that supports the fundamental effectiveness of adventure programming, but
cannot yet communicate a complete understanding of why programs are effective (290).”
Outdoor recreation provides many benefits to participants. Most of these benefits
are well documented. Driver and Brown identify, “nature appreciation, relaxation,
community, and achievement” in their research (McDonald 1987 23).” Additionally, it is
not uncommon for outdoor organizations to advertise bolstered self-esteem, social and
leadership skills, an adventure experience and environmental education. Friese, et al.
(1995) combed through 187 research documents surrounding outdoor education and
personal development and generally concluded: “Findings tend to support the notion that
participation in wilderness experience programs results in positive benefits, such as
enhanced self esteem and sense of personal control, and negative results from
participation are virtually non-existent (1).”
Sweatman and Heintzman (2004) documented that benefits include feelings such
as connectedness, heightened senses, inner calm, joy, inner peace, inner happiness, and
elatedness. Moreover, people report outdoor education experiences as pivotal moments in

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their lives whereby an undeniable transformation or initiation takes places leading
towards greater life perspective and purpose (24). My own experience reading reflective
writing assignments for the outdoor trips and classes at Northern Arizona University
supports these claims, as life-affirming phrases come up semester after semester in
student reflections. Although, I have not done a word study on these papers, the evidence
listed above resonates with what I recall reading. A future word study could contribute to
the growing evidence.
There is link between personal transformation and the wilderness adventure
process. “Campbell (1968) says it is a ‘call to adventure’, which alerts us to the fact that
transformation is necessary, possible, or immanent. Our response to this call can initiate
us into larger worldview. He calls radical psychological transformation the Death/Rebirth
process, and defines three important steps that must be honored to ensure that the process
has positive and lasting effect: separation, initiation, and return (Brown 48 1989).” The
parallels between the outdoor education process and Campbell’s journey are uncanny.
Participants venture into the unfamiliar (separation), are exposed to transformative
experiences (initiation), and return with newly acquired ways of being formed through
the transference of lessons from their journey to ever day life (the return). This is relevant
because this paper looks specifically at the fundamentals of transformative experiences in
the outdoor education process. It also posits that ecospiritual benefits can contribute to
this transformation process in people.
A problem is encountered in advocating for nature’s ecospiritual wisdom in
outdoor education because traditional outdoor education does not address the ecospiritual

54. 54
benefits of nature. A good question could be: Why are ecospiritually-oriented benefits
given less attention in outdoor education?
Perhaps these benefits receive less attention because they approach, what some
would consider being, a religious tone. If this is the case, it is understandable considering
the taboo of combining religion and open enrollment education in western culture. It is
true that the ecospiritual benefits in outdoor education are often compared with such
metaphysical practices as yoga, meditation, and various forms of altered states of
consciousness. Nonetheless, more research into why ecospirituality is marginalized
would help answer the question with greater clarity and less speculation.
Despite a lack of research for ecospiritual marginalization, we should remember
that Hindus, Buddhists and other ecospiritual disciplines have been retreating to
wilderness caves and mountaintops for centuries. This is important to consider. Nature
has played an important role in the quest for self-realization across time, space, and
culture. Additionally, ignoring less familiar nature-based ecospiritual practices is foolish,
for nature-based ecospirituality has been a pan-cultural phenomenon since the Paleolithic
age and perhaps earlier (Norberg-Hodge 1991; Sibini 2008; Forest 200; Plotkin 2003).
Human ecospirituality has evolved outdoors for the greater part of history. Subsequently,
it is difficult to ignore the connection between outdoor experiences and mystical benefits
reported by participants.
Researchers are finding strong evidence for ecospiritual phenomena in outdoor
education and recreation. Some have speculated that a more complete investigation,
including marginalized and less understood participant benefits, is in order to increase

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understanding around participant experiences. For example, Heintzman (2002)
convincingly argues for the inclusion of ecospiritual wellness to be included among the
beneficial gains from leisure–an integral aspect of outdoor education (147-149).
Anderson-Hanley (1997) identifies others who have similarly made a call for further
research into ecospiritual experiences and outdoor education: “Breitenstein & Ewart,
1990; Brown, 1989; Drovdahl, 1991; Dunning, 1994; Fox, 1995; Henderson, 1993;
Horwood, 1989; Koenig & Miller, 1990; Leenders & Henderson, 1991; Sao & Davis,
1990; Schroeder, 1991; Smith 1990 (106).”
Some (Stringer & McAvoy 1992; Fox 1997, 1999; Sweatman & Heintzman 2004,
2008; Loeffler 2004; Fredrickson & Anderson 1999; Ellard 2009; LeDuc, 2002) have
addressed the issue of ecospiritual benefits in outdoor education and found a positive
correlation. Yet, research supporting the ecospiritual benefits of outdoor education pale in
comparison to research supporting general personal growth. That does not mean it
should be ignored, for ecospiritual benefits are emerging from all angles of research in
outdoor experiences. For example, Livengood (2009) focuses on western religion and
outdoor recreation in his article, The Ecospiritual Heart of Adventure. Some focus on
individual gender groups (Hientzman 2007; Fredrickson & Anderson 1999; R.J. Fox
1997). Other studies (Ellard et. al. 2009; Marsh 2008) look at private experiences while
some look at organized program experiences (Daniel 2007; Griffin & Leduc 2009;
Anderson & Hanley 1996; Lasenby 2003). Still, some remain general in their approach to
studying ecospirituality and outdoor experience (Williams & Harvey 2001; Stringer &
McAvoy 1992).

56. 56
My position supposes that withholding ecospiritual benefits from contemporary
notions of personal growth limits full understanding of what it means to psychologically
mature. Considering this, developmental models and the role of ecospirituality need to be
revised and reconsidered. Ecopsychology offers a possible framework to help shift the
metaphysics of traditional outdoor education to help foster greater personal growth.
Ecospirituality
To be clear, it is necessary to identify what is meant by spirituality if we are to
include this word in our way of understanding outdoor experiences. Hawks (1994),
Heinztman (2009), and McGowen (2000) offer good insight into spirituality in their
respective articles. The work of all three authors is important because they look at
spirituality defined in an autonomous way in relationship with nature. That is to say, the
spirituality they are concerned with is secular, thereby making room to introduce
ecological influence. This is not ecospirituality from an organized religious point of view.
Common themes in all three articles include: a) feelings of oneness through aesthetics, b)
cultivating a deep commitment to a transcendent force, c) strong beliefs, principles, ethics
and values, d) love, joy, hope and compassion; and feelings of humility and wholeness
(Hawks 1994 3-13; Heinztman 2009 82-83; McGowen 2000 16).
Ecospirituality, in this context, is a nature-based spirituality whereby ecospiritual
experiences are induced through the interaction with the more-than-human environment.
A paraphrased version of R. Fox’s (1999) list of “Characteristics of Ecospirituality in

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Wilderness and Outdoor Education (456)” can help us begin to put a finger on the elusive
definition of ecospirituality. The following is a list of ecospirituality as:
1. (An) Aspect of human nature - This point assumes that ecospirituality is
an innate part of human nature that needs as much attention as given to
the mind or body in order to be whole.
2. (A) Mystery - Includes “a power or essence greater than one’s self…a
sense of mystery that exceed our analysis or understanding…a belief in
a power greater than oneself (Fox 1999 456).”
3. Awe or wonderment - “Wilderness settings contribute to a sense of
wonder, humility, and connectedness to nature (Fox 1999 456).”
4. (A) Connectedness or sense of oneness in all things - This includes the
common ecospiritual ground of finding purpose in life, becoming
reflective and contemplative in the presence of the complexity and scale
of nature, and a reorganization of life priorities.
5. Beauty - Includes the peacefulness found in natural attraction to nature’s
timeless and complex patterns, colors, and relationships.
6. Transcendent - Where senses of individuality, time, and space are
stretched into infinity.
7. (A) Peak experience - This includes experiences in nature that feel sacred,
overwhelming, transcendent, infinite, awakened, revolutionary, and
epiphany-like. These moments are long lasting and transformational.

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8. (An) Inner peace - Includes “oneness, strength, sublime, reverence, hope,
calm, joy, exaltation, and happiness (Fox 1999 456).”
9. (An) Ecospiritual wilderness attraction – The need to escape routine and
stress…to relax…to be stimulated by natural beauty…to adventure and
be renewed.
Researchers (Ashley 2007; Hientzman 2009; and Davis 1998) who study the
relationships between outdoor experiences and ecospirituality consistently echo the
ecospiritual characteristics listed by R. Fox in their descriptions of nature-based
spirituality. It is fair to assume that ecospirituality includes established characteristics
found by many despite the failure to universally define it. For that reason, R. Fox’s
(1999) list of ecospiritual characteristics will be used as reference when using the word
“ecospirituality” in this paper.
Support for increased ecospiritual opportunities during outdoor experiences are
consistent among researchers across a wide spectrum of approaches—as indicated above.
Yet, as Heitzman (2009) points out, this correlation is complicated. Going into nature
does not guarantee an ecospiritual experience. Heitzman indicates that more
considerations need to be taken when considering individual circumstances that either
catalyze or impede their chances of ecospiritual experiences in outdoor settings (75). That
is to say, although nature seems to be a good place to increase ecospirituality, a person’s
readiness to approach nature in this way is equally important.
Indeed the version of ecospirituality that is being used for this thesis is not easy to
specifically define in one sentence; and the inability to be put into words in such

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experiences is common among the ecospiritual. “William James defines illumination, or
mystical experience, as a spiritual event that is passive (cannot be sought but rather
occurs to the individual), noetic (incomprehensible through the faculty of reason),
transient (impermanent or even fleeting), and ineffable (indescribable using language)
(Murray N.D).”
In the language of psychology the word “transpersonal” is closely related to what
most would consider spiritual. Cortright (1997) brings spirituality and transpersonal
psychology together by using the words “psycho-spiritual” (25). Additionally, Davis
(1998) writes of how transpersonal experiences relate to spirituality. More importantly,
Davis (1998) also includes experiences in nature as an important consideration of both
transpersonal experiences and spirituality (70).
In the world of outdoor education the words “peak experience” by Maslow and
“flow” by Csikszentmihalyi are most used when referring to what many would consider
ecospiritual. Davis (1998) describes peak experiences saying they are “states of optimal
mental health, ranging from momentary events without any lasting effect to intense
mystical encounters with life-transforming consequences” (63). Davis describes flow as
involving “total involvement in an activity, centered attention, richer perception, intrinsic
motivation, enjoyment, present-centeredness, and self-transcendence (64).” He continues
by drawing parallels between outdoor heightened experiences, transpersonal psychology,
and ecospirituality. From this, Davis makes it apparent that different words are used to
represent very similar experiences. This is important to consider because if there is
evidence of peak experiences and flow in outdoor education, an indirect indication can be
made for the existence of ecospirituality.

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McDonald, Wearing and Ponting (2009) address the evidence for peak experience.
They maintain that “a connection between peak experiences in wilderness and
ecospiritual expression through the valuing of the natural environment as sacred, the
construction of new meaning and a connection with the powerful unseen forces of wild
nature (383).” This mirrors similar conclusions independently found by Heintzman
(2009) and Ashley (2007).
So far, the conversations of transpersonal psychology, ecospiritualism, peak
experiences, and flow indicate a close connection between the terms. It is useful to
recognize that similar transformational experiences are being described using different
languages in this case. An implication exists pointing to a more multidiscipline approach
to ecospiritual outdoor experiences. This crossing of psychology, ecology, experiential
education and philosophy may prove to yield new ideas and applications in the field of
outdoor education and understanding ecocentric social change.
While outdoor education recognizes instances of peak experience and flow as
results of recreating in natural places, little energy is spent towards fostering the
connections felt between humans and place that are inherent in ecospirituality. The
difference lies in epistemology. This is the part of the conversation where a better
understanding of traditional outdoor education will help expose the tendency to
marginalize ecospiritual benefits in outdoor education curriculum.
Outdoor Education
It is unclear when outdoor education began or exactly what it is. Taken literally, it
can be basically interpreted as humans learning outside. If that is the case, we have been
doing that a long time, perhaps since human origin. A definition for outdoor education

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can become a philosophical debate because hominids have been learning how to live in
the surrounding environment since their arrival on this planet just like all other animals.
What sets us apart from other life in this regard?
Neill (2007) points out our ancestors were trained to live in the world. The
human process in this regard differed from other animals in that a human infant quickly
begins to rely heavily on its ability to learn in addition with its instinct to survive. That is
to say, it is human survival instinct to evolve adaptive learning, and that is what makes
our outdoor education unique. During the time of our predecessors, at least several
million years, nearly all of this training/learning occurred outdoors (wilderdom.com).
Outdoor education, as we know it today, is notably different than its historical
precursors, however. Neill (2007) says that permanent walls were only recently
constructed, causing large proportions of people’s lives to be spent indoors. This changed
the perspective from which humans approached the outside world from something they
lived in to something they occasionally went into. Neill helpfully identifies the genre of
outdoor education that this paper will work with. He states that the human approach from
an indoor perspective has risen in the last 100 years in the west, and that it is no surprise
that modern outdoor education has evolved over the last hundred years to include the
following:
 It is dramatically shielded from the outdoors, a trend somewhat at odds with their
underlying motivation.
 It represents a leisure society that indulges in idyllic and romanticized parts of the
outdoors.

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 Its origin lies in the human ability to conceptualize what is meant by the outdoors
from indoor and scientific perspectives that subsequently fictionalizes nature.
(ibid.)
Neill’s perspectives are helpful in describing the circumstances from which modern
outdoor education has been born. Indeed, the foundation of the modern model of outdoor
education rests upon the human/nature disconnects both externally (physically) and
consequently internally (metaphysically). While definitions of outdoor education are
relative to time and place, this paper will focus upon the traditional model of outdoor
education that is currently present in western society.
To be more accurate, we need to look at the branches of outdoor education.
Outdoor education fields generally incorporate three common goals: environmental
education, adventure education (leadership), and outdoor skills. Some programs focus
only on one of the listed goals. “The three fields (outdoor [education], adventure and
environmental education) would fit more appropriately in a Venn diagram of intertwined
circles, with overlap and individuality for each (Dumouchel 2003 N.D.).” Moreover,
traditional outdoor education organizations target specific students groups: disabled, at-
risk youth, open enrollment with varying ages, religious, substance abuse, and probably
many more. Outdoor education becomes very vague when combining the variety of
outdoor education approaches with the variety of targeted students and agendas.
To help us draw out common themes of outdoor education we can reference a
chart, developed by Neill (2008), of various definitions and attributes that have been
given to outdoor education in recent history by professionals in the field. The quotes both